Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 28, chapter 99-101

palladias

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 99, 100, and 101. The previous thread is at nearly 500 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system.

Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Except for its attraction to innocence, there's no particular reason to think that the unicorn is more sentient than a horse, is there? Did I miss something important in the story?

I don't think there's any particular evidence in the story which bears on the intelligence of unicorns, save for the fact that some non humanoid magical creatures such as acromantulas are much smarter than their mundane kin. This alone should be sufficient to raise it to the point of being worthy of consideration.

Here's another possibility which Harry failed to consider; the side effects of drinking unicorn blood may in fact be worse than death, not for the individual, but for society, if it does something like permanently compromising the recipient's mora... (read more)

1kilobug13y

Well, the magical world is full of sentient or half-sentient things, from house elves to phoenix. The hypothesis that unicorns are half-sentient like a phoenix can't be excluded a priori, it's something a rationalist should inquire before taking any decision. And the scope and nature of side-effects should be inquired. Harry doesn't even do the simplest inquiry, asking Quirrel about it, but jumps to conclusion with incomplete data, doesn't sound like him at all.

4[anonymous]13y

That's true, but unicorns are immortal, and they have to be killed in order to give a human a few more years of life. Presumably some number of horse-years are worth a human-year; horses aren't quite so negligibly intelligent that the life-value of infinite horse-years converges to zero.